How magic?

Wired reports - again - about an "impossible" engine technology called Emdrive:

"The Emdrive is an electromagnetic drive that would generate thrust from a closed system — “impossible” say some experts. To critics, it’s flat-out junk science, not even worth thinking about. But its inventor, Roger Shawyer, has doggedly continued his work. (...) While the argument over the drive’s impossibility continues, so does the engineering work. The problem is that nobody wants to talk about it."

Reading this, two of Clarke's technology laws come to mind:
- When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Here today; revolution tomorrow

A thought-provoking piece at the New Scientist: Seven questions that keep physicists up at night.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps me –as an innovation researcher – up at night: from which of these questions will emerge the next industrial revolution?

Just think about Plank staying up at night, over the black body problem –then you have the digital technology. The 20th Century would have been very different without those Plank’s asleep nights.

So what is next? I am betting on “What is reality really?”

The world is (still) changing fast

R.I.P. GeoCities (1994-2009)
...and almost nobody remember about it. What about Blogger (or Tweeter) by 2014?

How things work?

Might be the pink paper the quintessential element of the economic journalism?

Bigmouth Golden Series - the best sentences in town

Benn Steil @ Financial Times: "when the facts are on our side, we pound the facts; when theory is on our side, we pound theory; and when neither the facts nor theory are on our side, we pound Keynes – and to great effect." (Keynes and the triumph of hope over economics)

More on incentives - patent chapter

A very interesting question at Slashdot: “To what extent do the traditional contours of patent law need to change in response to new technologies with a different set of market realities (biotech drugs are 22 times more expensive on average, and development costs for generics will be substantially higher) and in what direction? Need every new technological category get its own patent rules, and how do those rules get decided?”

If rational agents respond to incentives (see below), does a flat incentive approach works on patents?

On religion and economics

Johan Norberg @ Financial Post: "Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell -- it loses its ability to motivate humans to be prudent or respect their fears". Or as said at Mankiw's favorit textbook: "People Respond to Incentives".